The vanilla adjective appears in many places: plain-vanilla java, vanilla javascript: what does it exactly mean?
From context, is seems to stand for something "plain".
When is a specific code considered vanilla and when is it not? Plain, like not wrapped in a framework?
From wiki
:
Computer software, and sometimes also other computing-related systems like computer hardware or algorithms, is called Vanilla when not customized from its original form, meaning that it is used without any customizations or updates applied to it.
Geez! I googled this one but I got tons of references either to the food or terms that use it already.
This is correct for software, but doesn't exactly match the usage when used with programming languages ;)
Customization is too generic in this context. I would rather say: vanilla refers to using plain code, without 3rd party libraries or frameworks.